Spectator

“I shall first consider those pleasures of the imagination which arise from the actual view and survey of outward objects. And these, I think, all proceed from the sight of what is great, uncommon, or beautiful. There may, indeed, be something so terrible or offensive, that the horror or loathsomeness of an object may overbear the pleasure which results from its greatness, novelty, or beauty; but still there will be such a mixture of delight in the very disgust it gives us, as any of these three qualifications are most conspicuous and prevailing.” – Joseph Addison (1672-1719).

Temper Wit with Mortality
Enliven Mortality with Wit
All tattle and spectating
Addison and Steele

Delight and surprise, with words and ideas,
And there you’ll find
Humanity Sublime
Expatiating where the buffalo roam

My heart is an Ætna
Hammering hot against
The bosom of my mistress
Pure and white as snow
(And just as cold, the wit will add)
Which melts in Euclid’s elemental fire

You can keep your false wit,
The coarse congruity of anagrams and chronograms,
lipograms and acrostics, echoes and doggerel,
puns and quibbles, husk and rind,
eggs and axes and altars
Scatter them like seed in the beargarden
For the low readers, les petits esprits,
the rabble and the mob,
To peck at like dogs

Give me mighty metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion,
all the species of the great howling zoo of wit